


Sitting Next To You

by kkderp



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alive Laura Hale, Alternate Universe - No Hale Fire, Beginner Guitarist Stiles, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-15
Updated: 2014-02-15
Packaged: 2018-01-12 10:41:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,397
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1185294
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kkderp/pseuds/kkderp
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Stiles knows the damn song by heart and memorized the lyrics before he got the CD or before he picked up his guitar from the corner in the closet.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sitting Next To You

**Author's Note:**

> (Or, the one where Stiles taught himself how to play one song on the guitar to serenade Derek and has no idea how to start playing.)

Stiles sits on the edge of the bed with this stupid look on his face like he doesn’t know what he’s doing or why. His hands are nestled around the neck of his acoustic guitar, and Derek’s staring at him from across the room with his eyebrows clenched together in some kind of boxing match. Stiles’s heart is booming in his chest and he can barely feel his fingers as he stares down at him and he realizes that he’s not actually breathing. He’s just _there_.

He’s been planning this for months. Fucking learned how to actually play a guitar for this moment, and he’s already choking up to the point he doesn’t know what air is.

He knows the damn song by heart and memorized the lyrics before he got the CD or before he picked up his guitar from the corner in the closet.

“You don’t have to.”

Stiles glances up from his hands to Derek, who’s leaning against the dresser against the opposing wall. He looks perfect like he always does, arms crossed against his chest and eyebrows bunched up together, and just so fucking perfect.

At that moment, when their eyes meet, Stiles knows that he has to. He’s waited too long to pass this up for the _seventh_ time. “I’ve put it off long enough,” he offers and takes a deep breath, and he stares down at his fingers as they perch on the C chord.

He’s liked Derek for a while, and even though they never got along when he was in high school and him and Cora were connected at the hips, now that Stiles is in college and Derek actually has a job aside from being the creepy adult that sometimes watched his lacrosse practices, it’s gotten a lot easier to get to know what lays behind the scrunched up face and the huge bushy eyebrows.

He got the idea from Laura when he was (illegally, of course, he’s only 20) drunk and accidentally let it slip that he was more or less in love with the stupid idiot that was his friend’s older brother. She mentioned that Derek had a stupid obsession with musicians and serenading because he should have been born in the 80s.

(Stiles snorted his drink all over her when she said that, but that wasn’t important.)

She said that Derek was getting more into the indie-rock bands and less into the hard metal crap that he normally listened to. And Stiles owned a guitar (even though he had no idea how to play) so it was perfect. Well, basically.

He spent weeks of his time watching youtube videos of how to get down chords so he didn’t have to butcher his way through learning a song. It ended up happening that way, but Stiles just didn’t get it. It was much easier to fake playing piano than it was a guitar.

He bought the sheet music online and stumbled through chords and tablature before he was able to get down the introduction.

Honestly, it kind of all fell into place after that.

Stiles would see Derek walking around at one of the nearby mini marts and he would hear the damn song in his head and be able to poke his fingers in the air and motioning the chords to the song.

But now, sitting in his bedroom and Derek staring at him, he’s probably going to have a heart attack.

His fingers tense around the neck again and Derek moves to sit down next to him. When he hits the comforter Stiles’s body stills and he’s pretty sure he’s not breathing.

“Just play like I’m not here. Once you start, it’ll be easier.”

Stiles almost snorts, because _how the hell does Derek know_. But he takes a deep breath and grips the pick a little tighter before checking if the C chord is indeed the C chord.

It is (because Stiles spent forty minutes tuning the damn thing). 

Before he can stop himself again he moves to G and A minor in rhythm and lets the tension leave his body when he sees Derek smile out of the corner of his eye.

It flows easily from his fingers, and it’s so much easier to play when he’s fucking melting into his sheets.

_I do not know_  
 _Where I would go_  
 _In front of you_  
 _And hide away my soul  
_ _Cause you’re the only one who knows it  
_ _Yea you’re the only one who knows it_

He knows Derek knows the song because Laura told him that he did and it’s nice. He’s trying not to, but Stiles can feel Derek drumming his fingers along his knee next to him to the beat.

Stiles’s isn’t trying to seduce him. He just wants something _more_. He’s tired of just getting coffee when Cora’s in town and makes Derek go with her or running into him at the library when he’s shuffling between the stacks.

It’s really a please-notice-how-much-I-want-to-be-with-you kind of song. The lyrics are like that too and it’s almost easy to forget that Stiles is singing out his feelings to the stupid grumpy and easily irritable Derek next to him.

_And I will hide behind my pride_  
 _To don’t know what I think I could lie  
_ _Cause there’s a screen on my ches  
_ _Yea there’s a screen on my chest_

His breath hitches in his throat and he pushes himself through it because oh my god the chorus is what he needs to say and he just wants Derek to know how much he’s enamored with him and he just wants to wrap him into his arms because he knows that life hasn’t been easy on either of them after Derek’s parents died and his mom passed away and all the shit with Kate and Jennifer and Stiles witnessing the murder of his girlfriend. He needs it as much as Derek does and he just wants to hold him and be there for him and love him and holy shit he really wants to have sex with him and it’s ridiculous.

_I’m standing in front of you_  
 _I’m standing in front of you_  
 _I’m trying to be so cool  
_ _Everything together  
_ _Trying to be so cool_

He snorts because he was and then Derek sat down next to him. He can feel Derek’s eyes on his hands as he plucks at strings.

Stiles doesn’t want to finish singing. He wants to set the guitar next to him and flip onto Derek before either of them knows what’s happening and Derek’s canting into him and Stiles can’t get his clothes off fast enough.

Even as he plays, he doesn’t think that’ll happen.

_I can’t see past my own nose_  
 _I’m seeing everything in slow-mo_  
 _Look I’ll be low crashing down to the ground_  
 _Just like a vertical loco-motive that’s a train_  
 _In my painting a picture that’s in my brain_  
 _A train from the sky locomotive my motives are insane_  
 _My flow’s not great_  
 _Okay_  
 _I conversate with people who know if I flow_  
 _When my song got no radio play_  
 _While you’re doing fine_  
 _There’s some people and I_  
 _Who have a really tough time_  
 _Getting through life  
_ _So excuse us  
_ _While we sing to the sky_

He takes a deep breath after the long verse and feels Derek’s hand carded against the small of his back as he breathes in again. Something’s happening, he can fucking feel it, even if he has no idea what it is. Derek’s hand is warm and even though Stiles is pretty sure he’s sweating through his skin his hands are like ice as they dart across the fretboard.

_I’m standing in front of you…_

He repeats the chorus again, twice, and taps his foot against the ground in rhythm with Derek’s fingers as they drum across his thigh. It’s actually easier than he thought, singing his feelings out of a song he didn’t have to write and it’s definitely easier because Derek isn’t across from him and he doesn’t have to stare at the look on his face.

_We’re broken, we’re broken, we’re broken  
_ _We’re broken people, we’re broken people_

His voice cracks twice and he winces each time but Derek moves his hand from Stiles’s back to his thigh and gives it a squeeze. Reassurance, kind of. It’s like Derek actually knows that Stiles’s selling his entire soul to him and that this is probably one of the most awkward moment of his entire existence and he really just wants Derek to kiss him and-

Fuck. He doesn’t even get to finish the song because when he opens his mouth to repeat the chorus a third time his guitar goes forgotten in his hands and Derek’s mouth is on his and he can’t even comprehend what is happening because _holy fuck_ Derek is kissing him and he doesn’t know how to react.

It’s just a kiss and he shouldn’t be freaking out this much but his guitar falls to the ground and he moves on top of Derek - he’s fucking sitting on Derek Hale’s lap - and he holds each side of his head between his palms and he’s kissing back. It’s like air and Stiles doesn’t even know what he did before, doesn’t know how he made it through the first year of college without kissing him. Doesn’t know how he got through high school without actually seeing so much perfection inside someone aside from what was obvious because _holy fucking shit_ Derek was hot.

The kissing lasts longer than he thought it would and he is fucking grateful. Derek’s shirt’s off and thrown over the back of his bed and their naked chests are pressed together and Stiles is just pressing his face into Derek’s neck, breathing him in.

“Sorry.”

He hears the words but doesn’t understand so he pulls back and gives him a confused stare. “

Why?”

“I shouldn’t have kissed you.”

Stiles stares at Derek. He doesn’t know what else to do, so he just stares, and hell if he doesn’t notice that Derek’s eyes keep darting down to his lips and it doesn’t make any sense because who wouldn’t want Derek to kiss them he’s fucking perfect. He sets himself up to be a martyr, but that’s something that he can work on.

“Shut up, Derek,” Stiles mutters, and he presses their lips back together. “That was obviously me telling you that I want to kiss you. I want to kiss you all the time. Hell, that was practically the best moment of my life, so don’t you go fucking dare apologizing for kissing me because even if that’s the only kiss you ever give me in my entire life I just fucking serenading you and you don’t apologize after someone serenades you. It’s rude.” He pulls back to stare at Derek. “So just don’t.”

Derek’s eyes are against him, staring past the air in the room as everything around them stills. Long, silent moments pass before he moves his hand back into Stiles’s hair and runs his thumb down the back of his neck. He doesn’t say anything, but he doesn’t have to.

They watch each other during those long, silent moments and for once in his life, Stiles shuts up. The only thing he can hear is the blood pumping in his ears.

The guitar is strewed across the floor and he’s still half perched on top of Derek, their mouths only centimeters away. This kind of shit doesn’t happen in real life. Stiles knows it.

But when Derek’s hand pulls his face closer again and they breathe in each other’s air, he knows Derek’s not sorry for kissing him. He knows that the serenading wasn’t a bad idea.

He can taste Derek and the staleness of his mouth. It’s almost like an outdated mint, left at the bottom of a Christmas stocking forgotten. It also kind of tastes like coffee, black.

Derek only drinks it black.

The kiss is slow and long and silent like the moments preceding it. It speaks louder than words, though, and Stiles can actually hear the meaning behind the sound of lips running against each other.

“I didn’t know you liked Twenty One Pilots,” Derek says, mouth still pressed against Stiles’s lips.

Stiles pulls Derek’s lower lip into his mouth and sighs around it before pulling back and lands a hand on Derek’s thigh. “Laura told me you liked them. I only know a couple songs.”

“So you taught yourself how to play?”

He doesn’t know how to take the question, so Stiles looks at him because he definitely is allowed to teach himself how to play guitar to serenade someone. “Yeah, so?”

“Nothing, that’s just so you.”

Stiles snorts and hits Derek against the chest. “Shut up.”

It’s banter after that. Well, a little banter and a lot of kissing. A lot a lot of kissing. Kissing times seven amounts of kissing. So much kissing that Stiles considers becoming a professional guitarist. _“Don’t do that, you’ll never get anything done. How long did it take you to learn how to play that song?” “Not important.”_ So much kissing that Stiles never wants to leave the bed. _“Do we have to?” “Stiles, I’m hungry. You made me stand here and wait for 45 minutes before you even started playing.”_ So much kissing that even when they walk out of Stiles’s bedroom, they’re still connected at the hip and still kissing times seven.

And they eat dinner because Stiles brought home pizza and told Derek he couldn’t finish it himself. They fall into the couch watching some old black and white horror movie Derek’s been wanting to watch but he doesn’t have Netflix because he’s _stupid_ and Derek’s laying across the couch with his back to Stiles and Stiles is running his hand through Derek’s hair because they’re stupid and don’t know what else to do.

When Scott gets back to their apartment the next morning after spending a terrible night shift at the pet store on the edge of campus, he snaps a few pictures of them curled up and sleeping all over each other. Everyone would kill him if he didn’t, especially Lydia.

He doesn’t even know what happened the night before but he leaves them that way and lays down in his bed, dreaming of dogs and the sweet smell of Allison.

 

**Author's Note:**

> This is not beta-d. 
> 
> The song is Screen by Twenty One Pilots and it's amazing. They're entire album Vessel is the physical form of perfection (aside from Sterek that is). I heard the song and just thought about the beginning of this scene and then it kind of just exploded.
> 
> Thanks for reading x3
> 
> I also do not think people that don't have Netflix are stupid, but c'mon! Eight bucks a month for a but load of shows and movies? I'd tap that.


End file.
